Cranky Goes A-Ranting II

Generally, I am a placid, easy going lass. Things do bother me, but I usually get past them with a shrug and a muttered profanity or two. If it's something extreme, I may resort to a quick venting with Charles (or a handy friend) with briefly bulging eyeballs and spittle. After that, I wipe my mouth and poke my globes back in my orbits (It's handy, being a contact lens wearer. No qualms about manhandling your eyeballs back to their proper positions.) and I'm done. Water off a duck's back.

Quack.

Sometimes, though, I must take more extreme steps to purge these irritations. That's where you come in, oh my friends in the computer. If I get these down, I can remove them, one by one from my psyche, where they are currently lodged, like splinters in my toes.

1) It is summer. Summer is hot. In hot weather one tends to wear cooler clothing. In winter, it is cold. In winter, one tends to wear warmer clothing. Therefore, in summer, the set temperature of a building ought to be warmer than in the winter. Yes? Fuck yes. Or not. At least not in our office, where it is set at a frosty 68 and even in my lab coat I am shivering and holding my warm cuppa coffee to try to get the feeling back in my fingers. Lacking a warm mug, I am forced to inflict them on my poor patients. If you need me to examine your sore throat, you will probably not mind my corpse-cold hands. If you need me to poke around on your belly, you will probably find yourself clutching the ceiling tiles, where your reflexes have flung you. (Of course, I have inquired into the reason for this. I have been told that the A/C in this building requires it to be set at this level or it stops working. My comment that it would not be a bad thing went unheeded.) Were I a patient sitting on the iceberg that is the exam table in my underpants and a sheet, I'd have even more to say.

2) The problem with being a smart-ass is that it can be difficult for people to realize that you are not being a smart-ass when you suggest it would not be a bad thing to let the A/C die a quick death.

3) Baby talk. Especially baby talk to babies. If you are a consenting adult and prefer to call them 'doggies' and 'horseys' and utter sentences like "Oof. I went whoopsies!" and "I need to tinkle," then that's your own lookout. But the babies, for crying out loud, are just learning to talk. Let's teach them to talk correctly.

4) Jell-o is not a salad. It is a dessert. And corn is not a vegetable, it is a grain. A very tasty grain, but a grain, none the less. It does not count as a serving of veggies anymore than a piece of bread does. That is, unless you are the branch of the federal government that oversees the nutritional content of school lunches, which notoriously considered fries and ketchup to each count as a serving of veggies. I haven't looked, but I'm sure that then qualifies a PB&J sandwich as 2 veggies and a fruit. Add 2 handfuls of chips and you've got your '5 A Day' all in one sitting.

5) The entire office, minus a couple of us, is taking part in the new weight loss clinic that has been started at our site. A program that involves medication and shots and such. (No, I'm not involved, just a bystander.) Why, then, did those staff members who are partaking in this ordeal order 2 huge egg, bacon and cheese breakfast pizzas from the local pizza delivery place? I understand cravings during dieting. Lord, do I. But is this really such a good idea? (Can you tell it is taking every ounce of willpower to not go to the back room and scam a few slices? Could that be at the root of my bitterness? Hush, you.)

There. I feel better. Still hungry, but better.

Anyone else need to fling some angst? It's fun.